Friday, March 27, 2009

In the flesh...

Playlist
Hank Mobley – Quintet
Lou Donaldson – Lou Takes Off

My two new jazz purchases soundtracked my day...

This evening I was off to a dinner in aid of the The Willow Foundation, founded by ex-Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson and his wife, following the death of their daughter 10 years ago - it offers fabulous once in a lifetime days to terminally ill people aged 16-40...

Bob related the tale of one of their most unusual – a young lady aged 33 wanted to return home from hospital for one last Christmas with her husband and three young children and open her curtains on Christmas morning and see her kids out playing in the snow, with a snowman, a Santa, snowballs – the whole thing...

The charity set this up – with a Coca Cola truck transporting the necessary snow from the mountains of Scotland down to Portsmouth on the South coast of England...

The lady died a month or so later...

The dinner was organised by Arsenal Scotland Supporters club, with whom the Exec Producer and I travelled to Sunderland last year and with whom Anne enjoyed the Newcastle match last week...

Our table was hosted by my colleague Barry – here he is with me in Starbucks as we tried to sober up a wee bit before arriving at the venue, having partaken of a couple of drinks with the Exec Producer, post the work-a-day slog...



The caramel waffle biscuits were good as you can see...

A good night was had by all, with entertaining speeches and a lively Q&A from Bob Wilson and, the captain of the 1971 double winning Arsenal side, Frank McLintock...

There was the ubiquitous auction of various football related stuff, days out to Premiership games etc etc...

Your correspondent put a bid in for this painting created by Thierry Henry kicking a paint covered ball against a canvas – best lot of the night to my mind – but it went for three times what I could afford...



Late on, after not drinking too much and feeling inexplicably a bit under the weather, I had to call on the Exec Producer to perform a very rare taxi role and bring me home while the rest of our table went “uptown”...

Back home, I was cheered by a bottle of Drambuie delivered earlier today to Crispycat Towers addressed to Cloudland Blue Quartet – a very kind gift from old school chum and recent convert to the CBQ cause, Mr Steven Black – “to help keep the vocal chords lubricated”...

Meg the Black cat tried her best to get into the very narrow box it came in...



Cheers Steve!!

Highlight of the Day : Boyhood heroes in the flesh...

2 comments:

Jazzman Stu said...

You watch 1959:The Year That Changed Jazz, on BBC4 Fri night?
I saw some of it after coming in from pub and sky plused the rest as it was on late.
Looked really good.

Cloudland Blue Quartet said...

Sadly, I can't get BBC 4 but will look for this on the I-player - thanks for the heads up...